The Remarkable SaaS Podcast

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to provide us a significant competitive advantage by leveraging unstructured data. My guest is Kirk Marple, CEO of Unstruk Data.Kirk Marple is a customer-focused technology leader. He has over 25 years of experience developing media management pipelines, leading DevOps at venture-backed companies, and structuring successful exits. He holds multiple patents and industry awards and has truly established himself as an industry leader.Today, he's the CEO of Unstruk Data, a company that's on a mission empowering enterprises to transform unstructured data files into actionable intelligence about real-world assets to solve massive business, environmental and societal problems.And this inspired me, and hence I invited Kirk to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the data analytics market - and in particular, unstructured data. Kirk shares his journey of how he pivoted from building a podcast discovery tool to a data platform for real-world assets. He shares his big lessons learned about coming to market too early and how postponing the launch has been a valuable decision that made the company more recession-proof. Lastly, he shares his experience on what it takes to build a software business that's got staying power. Here is one of his quotes:"I think the volume of data is probably one of the big stopping points. Oil and gas companies probably spend millions of dollars to search the undersea floor of their oil pipelines. And now the data just sits in a bucket somewhere after they capture it, and they can't go back and find it, or reuse that data…"During this interview, you will learn four things:Why the real user value with SaaS solutions virtually always happens in the last mileThat the thing that keeps founders awake at night is not the worry about having a compelling solution but how to attract companies that need it.Why messaging is often the hardest thing - not the technology.Why having an open platform can cause serious problems in salesFor more information about the guest from this week:Kirk MarpleWebsite: Unstruk Data

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to create a world free from security incidents. My guest is Shikhar Shrestha, CEO and Co-Founder of Ambient.ai.Shikhar is a tech entrepreneur on a mission. He builds and leads teams that invent new technologies that transform markets, all with the end goal of delivering magical outcomes for our customers.After several years of R&D in Computer Vision and Artificial Intelligence in academia at Stanford and industry at Apple and Google, he realized that the reactive approach to security doesn’t work for today’s world. That sparked the idea to found Ambient.ai in February of 2017.Ambient.ai is a computer vision intelligence company. It's on a mission to transform security operations by preventing every security incident possible - without sacrificing privacy. They're building solutions for the world that we want to live in.And this inspired me, and hence I invited Shikhar to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the world of security prevention. Shikhar shares his vision to transform the industry and how the journey he's following to make the biggest possible impact. He explains what he's done differently to build traction momentum by creating a strong pull from the market. Lastly, he shares his big lessons learned from dealing with disbelief from customers, investors, and employees - and how to build a software business that cannot be ignored.Here's one of his quotes:"In the first phase, the only thing that really matters is getting to product market fit. And I think, over time, the success or failure of the company really depends on the strength of the product market fit. You want to be able to answer this question, which is: what do you uniquely offer that someone desperately wants. And unique and desperate are really important words there because if it's not unique, other people will copy you, and the company is not really going to be valuable. And if the customers or prospects are not desperate to solve the problem, it's going to be very hard as a startup to convince anybody to buy the product."During this interview, you will learn four things:How to design for creating pull from the marketWhy going against conventional wisdom is often the route to creating very defensible differentiation.Why early disbelief is a precondition for a good entrepreneurial opportunityWhy companies should be built to be anti-fragile and how to go about that For more information about the guest from this week:Shikhar ShresthaWebsite Ambient.ai

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to join up Healthcare and prevent people from having cancer, losing their mobility, or their lives due to errors and delays. My guest is Chris Dial, Co-founder and CEO of Salutare.Chris started his career as an analyst at Forrester Research. He joined Microsoft in 2002, where - over a period of 18 years - he enjoyed several roles from Sr. Product Manager all the way up to Microsoft's Senior Director of Cloud ISVs and Startups. Here, he led the process of finding and making successful software companies building and running apps using Microsoft SQL, Azure, and Dynamics. He managed this innovation team across 12 European countries.In December 2020, he co-founded Salutare, which he leads as the CEO. They believe that no patient should ever be lost. Every clinician and patient benefits when they are in dialogue together on the patient’s journey, and clinicians can be freed from performing many manual tasks. Salutare is on a mission to create online services where this dialogue happens and where the greatest improvements for healthcare can be made for better outcomes.This inspired me, and hence I invited Chris to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the process of joining up healthcare - and why doing nothing is not an option. Chris shares his approach to making the impossible possible - and the lessons he learned to overcome the hurdles to gain traction.He shares his advice to stay mentally sane in the day-to-day battle that startups face to create meaningful change. Lastly, he shares his secrets to creating software that people love to work with - every single day.Here's one of his quotes:It's extremely rewarding when you hear about these cases that you can make an impact. We had an early pilot participant in one of the hospitals, and she said, 'Saturday is my favorite working day. During the week, I've got to deal with all these other hospital systems. And then I work on your software. But on Saturday, I only work with your software, and it's a pleasure.' And I was so touched by that. And I shared it with the team. And I said we have to aim for that nonstop every day. That's what we want people to say. During this interview, you will learn four things:How you can create transformative change by addressing problems that cross silosWhy customer anecdotes of joy should be a must-have metric to track for every R&D department.How to get customers to coach you to make the deal happen.Why you should design both for adoption and diffusion momentum - and howFor more information about the guest from this week:Chris DialWebsite Salutare

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to help business app developers make the impossible possible. My guest is Harry Brundage, Co-founder and CEO at GadgetHarry is a hard-core developer turned into a tech entrepreneur. He worked at Shopify in numerous capacities, building and scaling Shopify's backend infrastructure, frontend technology stack, big data platform, and engineering organization. Since leaving Shopify, Harry has built many other systems -- a note-taking tool, an automated vertical farm, a QA tool -- allowing him to gain first-hand experience with how repetitive software development can be. The made him ask the question: Why does it need to be this hard!Today, Harry is the co-founder and CEO of Gadget, the serverless stack for eCommerce app developers. Harry and his team are on a mission to enable developers to build ambitious software ridiculously fast.And this inspired me, and hence I invited Harry to my podcast. We explore what's broken when it comes to the speed by which we can develop business applications. Harry shares his vision about making the impossible possible for developers - and how this backs up his dream to be a company builder at the end of the day. He shares his hard lessons learned about what it took to build something that makes even the most critical developers advocates. Here's one of his quotes:"Have you ever heard the Marc Andreessen quote: Software is eating the world? We would say: It's not done yet. It's a very big meal, the world. And there are just a lot of unautomated business processes, and people sitting in cubicles copying and pasting data between different systems. We just believe that there's a huge number of problems that have yet to be solved with software, and we're excited about enabling those builders to do that."During this interview, you will learn four things:How you can create a lot of interest and differentiation by creating a solution that's about uninteresting and undifferentiated stuff That one way to create momentum is to help users create things they wouldn't be able to otherwiseThat creating a remarkable SaaS product is not about everything the product does - but how it makes your users feel using itThe lessons he learned (and the tough decision he needed to make) in speeding up traction and adoptionFor more information about the guest from this week:Harry BrundageWebsite Gadget

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to make becoming data-driven easier than ever before. My guest is Peter Fishman, Co-founder and CEO of Mozart Data.Dr. Peter Fishman has over a decade of experience running data and data-adjacent teams at companies like Microsoft, Yammer, Opendoor, Playdom, and Eaze. He realized that he was building the same types of modern data stacks at each company. Taking a broader perspective, he saw many other companies building a data stack over and over again. This inspired him and his co-founder, Dan, to found Mozart Data in 2020. Mozart Data is on a mission to make it easy for anyone to set up a modern data stack, without a data engineer, in under an hour. Why does this matter? Because that enables 10x more employees to get access to data, it decreases the time to insight by 76% and delivers 30% cost savings compared to assembling your own data stack. And that inspired me, and hence I invited Peter to my podcast. We explore what's broken around the way we can embrace the full potential of data. Peter explains his vision of what can be when we can leverage the power of data as a first principle versus an afterthought. He shares his lessons learned around what a SaaS application has to excel at to overcome the trust issues customers have and create a sustainable business from the start.Here are some of his quotes: The idea of, let's build everything and let's be good at everything. And I think like this is like, almost the kiss of death. Customers don't want good. Customers want the best. You might say, well, the customer won't know the difference between good and the best. They will know the difference. What I think of as the way to win business is you have a small contract, and you expand with a combination of the startup and the impact that you're having. So, as you're helpful, that sort of growth within the company ends up being sort of a no-brainer. During this interview, you will learn four things:That you can build a thriving business by working closely with your competitors That customers want the best product in the market - whether we like it or not. The opportunity is: they define 'best' - no one else.What principles to follow to grow solid traction around adoptionWhen you know your vision is clear and powerful enoughFor more information about the guest from this week:Peter FishmanWebsite Mozart Data

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to give consumer product manufacturers an edge in building customer relationships and growing continuous revenue streams. My guest is Ervin Draganovic, CEO and Co-founder of Layerise.Ervin has a proven track record in product development, leadership, and corporate governance and has the capacity to attract, build and lead top-performing teams. He calls himself a digital-product-driven corporate opportunist.In 2019, he co-founded Layerise, which he leads as its CEO. Layerise is on a mission to help companies make their products come alive.Its vision is to create a world free from all the print and ink material used for consumer product and service onboarding. At its core, Layerise believes it can convert environmental positive impact into commercial growth for enterprises worldwide.And this inspired me, and hence I invited Ervin to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the customer experience process when it comes to physical consumer goods. Ervin explains how he's found a way to transform a global industry and how he managed to turn a compliance requirement into a commercial engine. He also shares his tough lessons learned in taking the product to market and selling it to an audience that's going to love it in 5-10 years' time but is not aware it exists. Last but not least, he sets apart what he believes is required to create a SaaS business that's worth making a remark about.Here is one of his quotes:We were not able to look at the market and say, Okay, this is a kind of an evolutionary step. We really had to envision a future. And a good way of predicting the future is actually by creating it. So we were looking far out and saying, okay, in 10 years' time, how is a modern hardware consumer goods manufacturer dealing with post-sales activities? Are they aware of who the customers are? Do they need to be in constant relationship with their customers? What are the factors of competitive advantage at that point for each brand? And then we looked at if those are actually to have the best customer experience, product, onboarding, customer relationship, what do we then need to do today? During this interview, you will learn four things:What we need to do differently to create SaaS products that have a transformative impact, rather than just evolutionaryHow to package your SaaS products to wake up the market and make people think, 'holy moly - we definitely have to step up our game.'That if you don't do your product right, you end up spending all your budget on marketing.What mindset to embrace to ensure a lifelong competitive advantageFor more information about the guest from this week:Ervin DraganovicWebsite Layerise

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to enable every B2B Sales person to gain trust and advantage even before the 1st meeting. My guest is Lidia Vijga, Co-founder and CEO of Decklinks Lidia started her career in the Adtech space, where she gained sales experience with both PixFuture and StackAdapt. In 2018, she co-founded Briefbid, a two-sided marketplace where media teams can connect, plan and work together.The insights she got there sparked the idea behind her new company. Today, Lidia is a Co-founder & CEO at DeckLinks, a platform that empowers b2b sales teams to create the most personal buying experience with video sales decks.DeckLinks is on a mission to make b2b sales more human. It's building a world where sales professionals can show their expertise and personality to create a deeper connection with the buyers at any stage of the sales cycle.And this inspired me, and hence I invited Lidia to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the world of B2B sales when it comes to how we communicate. Lidia shares her vision of how companies can grow faster by making sales more human. She talks us through the big lessons she learned in her previous startup, and how the unique insights she gained firsthand gave her and her team a formula for success. Last but not least, she shares her advice on what it takes to build a SaaS business that's ultra-lean, remarkable, and able to compete with the 'big boys.'Here's one of her quotes:"This is how a buyer thinks. First they make a decision about you as a salesperson. Then they make a decision about the company. The offering, the value prop, everything else is after - but the first thing - the first 10 seconds is whether they like you, whether they trust you, and whether they want to work with you. These are the first three things they answer in their head in the first 10 seconds as they see you as a salesperson."During this interview, you will learn four things:Why deciding to automating everything can be the biggest mistake you ever made How to win against competitors that have the biggest brand, the best product, and the best priceWhy the number of customers that refuse to take your discount should be a key metric on your dashboardWhy designing for creating an organic network effect should be your biggest priorityFor more information about the guest from this week:Lidia VijgaWebsite Decklinks

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to solve the global talent problem. My guest is Nemo D'Qrill, CEO at Sigma PolarisNemo has traveled many paths driven by a passion to discover, understand, and solve worthy problems. From Mathematician to Logician to Flautist for the Danish Queen to Entrepreneur.He was honored as the youngest-ever Goodwill Ambassador of Denmark, presenting joint ventures of world-leading companies internationally such as Maersk, Vestas, Grundfos, and Lego. His constant passion for understanding and solving problems naturally led him down the path of Entrepreneurship. With passion and drive, Nemo decided to tackle the age-old problems of inefficiency, discrimination, and inaccuracy in recruitment and HR in general. That's why he founded Sigma Polaris around a singular vision: Creating a world where HR analysis is based solely on meritocracy and where bias and discrimination are things of the past.Its mission: To change the world of work and shift how companies build, engage, retain, and capitalize on the use of diverse teams in today’s workforce.And this inspired me, and hence I invited Nemo to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the way we recruit our talent today. That there isn't a talent problem, but a distribution problem - and how we can fix that with technology - in particular by removing bias and having to rely on intuition.Nemo shares the most important lessons learned from his startup journey: that building a business requires much more than just an amazing product; what advantage leveraging diversity gives them; and why his business couldn't have been what it is today without investing time in exercise, i.e., taking care of himself.Here's a quote from him:There is a saying, 'you can get a book to be popular, by getting eight out of 10 people to like it, or by getting two out of 10 people to love it'. Now, when you are a giant, you need, most of the time, the eight out of 10. You need to be having almost all of the people you speak with think that at least you're interesting good. But I think as a startup, one of the things I've realized is this: we need to work with people that truly buy into it, the people that also believe in the mission. Because if you speak with them, sales cycles get shorter, and procurement gets easier. And all of a sudden, you get a reference, and you get a quote from every single client. And I think today, we've had a quote from almost every single client we have worked with because we choose clients that believe. Instead of trying to get tons of people interested, we try to get some people super excited. During this interview, you will learn four things:His strategy to be less 'all over the place' How you can create a 300% impact difference in a matter of just 3 monthsThat you can get your product to be popular by getting 8 out of 10 people to like it or getting 2 out of 10 to love itThat it doesn't matter how good your pitch deck is if it doesn't get shared. For more information about the guest from this week:Nemo D'QrillWebsite Sigma Polaris

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to help bring the global unemployment rates down. My guest is Shay David, Co-founder and CEO of Retrain.AIShay is a serial entrepreneur who brings many years of experience in dreaming up products and making them a reality: from concept to market, from slideware to hundreds of millions of dollars in sales.He co-founded Kaltura, where he helped define the future of video - thereby taking responsibility as CRO, then GM, and today as a member of the Board. Prior to that, he co-founded Destinator Technologies, a mobile-GPS-navigation software, and consulted on open systems to Fortune 500 companiesToday, he's the Co-founder, Chairman, and CEO of Retrain.AI, a company founded on the vision to make a measurable impact on global unemployment rates by helping 10+ million users find meaningful career opportunities and help enterprises future-proof their organizations. Their mission: To inform, empower and redefine the way enterprises hire, retain and grow their employees. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Shay to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the Talent Development market and why the best strategy for managing HR & talent management today sadly is: "We'll do tomorrow what we did yesterday". Shay shares his vision of how to solve the global talent problem at the core. He also shares his secrets on how to create a sustainable advantage and what needs to be in place to shape a software business that people not only start talking about but keep talking about. Here's one of his quotes: Let me ask you, for any organization that you ever worked for when was the last time you logged in to a corporate learning network and expected to actually learn something? The answer is that never happens. Right? When was the last time that you get an email from HR that actually had important career advice for you? Again, that never happens. When was the last time that a candidate that a company submitted a resume and got a call within 15 minutes saying we've processed your request, we think we understand who you are, we have two questions, and we want to schedule an interview for you for tomorrow? Again, that never happens. But this is not a joke. This is a problem affecting billions of people every day, the systems that are intended to manage talent acquisition to manage talent organization, and learning and development, those systems are failing. And the cost of that failure is catastrophic. During this interview, you will learn four things:Why having a shared image with your customers about the future state of the world is critical to creating momentumThat a way to understand whether you are on the right track is to ask your customers to articulate in one sentence how you give them immediate valueWhy it's not about finding product-market fit - but keeping product-market fit.Why, in order to succeed, you shouldn't think about technology, regulations, or money. That always comes secondFor more information about the guest from this week:Shay DavidWebsite Retrain AI

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to make 1-1 coaching approachable for all of us. My guest is Christine Tao, Co-founder & CEO at Sounding Board.Throughout her career, a central theme for Christine has always been leadership development. She uncovered the power coaching could have on people when she acted in her role as Senior Vice President of Developer Relations at Tapjoy, a mobile advertising platform, where she led the growth of Tapjoy’s network business from 0 to more than $100 million in revenue in less than 3 years. She experienced it from the other end when she advised several venture-backed startups including Flyby Media (acquired by Apple), Immersv, and Comprendi. She realized firsthand that today's workforce is increasingly overwhelmed and stressed with increasing responsibilities and an always-on culture. This inspired her to do something about it.Today, Christine is the CEO & Co-founder of Sounding Board, a company that was founded around the vision to make coaching accessible to leaders at all levels of the organization and break through the high-cost barriers that had made it impossible in the past. Its mission: Develop the world’s most impactful leaders.And this inspired me, and hence I invited Christine to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the world of leadership coaching and how this - by blending technology and people in the right way can be a thing of the past. Christine further shares her big lessons learned during the pandemic - and how she and her team not only secured Sounding Board would survive but actually come out stronger as a company. During this interview, you will learn four things:That the question in a Pandemic is not: 'where should we cut', but 'where can we continue to invest'How to create an organization that's aligned and autonomous, and at the same time more creative and powerfulThat the way to survive an existential crisis is not to increase focus on your own company, but on that of your customersWhy being bootstrapped - and being less well-capitalized than your competitors can be very helpful.For more information about the guest from this week:Christine TaoWebsite Sounding Board